Oberg complaint to website over 'space weapons' misstatements

Re
(http://www.cfr.org/publication/12179...ly_ana lysis).



I came across your 'space weapons' story (Dec 5), and compared it to the
space history and news that I've been familiar with through my career -
there are a number of assertions and judgments that in my view are
anti-accuracy, or more bluntly, delusionally untrue. There's also a
disconnect between your advertising your site as "non-partisan" and its
consistent policy of accepting without question assertions from left-wing
lobby groups, as indicated by some factual flaws to be cited. I'd seriously
suggest you try harder to remember from your news days your standards of
balanced (and skeptical) journalism.



You write: ".the Bush administration released an unclassified version of its
new U.S. National Space Policy, which goes far beyond previous policies in
asserting America's right to respond forcefully to such threats."

-- This is an interpretation to use the word 'forcefully', but it's a
judgment call, or a manifestation of pre-existing political grudges.
Editorializing is not a problem.



You write: "Bill Martel, a space policy expert at the Fletcher School of
Diplomacy, tells CFR.org in this podcast that the new space policy "sounds
like a precursor to the weaponization of space."

.. "Supporters readily concede the point. "Space supremacy is now the
official policy of the U.S. government," writes Michael Goldfarb in the
Weekly Standard.

-- You can always find some right-wing rant to fit your spin, but it's not
justified to generalize, especially when counterexamples - even on
msnbc.com - are so easily found. Dolman inter alia (myself included) most
assuredly do NOT "concede the point". The weaponization charge comes from a
chorus of ideological fear-mongers who have played the same tune for
decades.



You write: "Beginning with Ronald Reagan's 1983 proposal for space-based
missile defense, ."

-- As I read it, his proposal makes no mention of 'space based'
architectures. Did you read something into it that wasn't there? Is there
some reference in his own words - not those of his critics - that you can
cite for me?



You write: "Beginning with Ronald Reagan's 1983 proposal for space-based
missile defense, the military's share of U.S. space spending has quadrupled.
"

-- Here's where you jump off the deep end into made-up nonsense. All
published charts of military-civilian space spending show military spending
below civilian spending in the 1970's until the Carter administration, when
the line begins a sharp upturn - an upturn that continues on the course set
in 1979-1980 into the Reagan administration, then flattens out. There is no
data that I can find, or that my friends (when asked) could find, that show
the military share 'quadrupling' beginning after 1983 - it's a phony
factoid.

See for example "U.S. Space Spending - Civilian, Military and Commercial",
Congressional Research Service - Library of Congress - 4/2003; Page 12 has a
chart 1959-2007, http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/...e/programs.pdf



You write: "Space shuttle missions more frequently serve national security
interests today than they did in the 1980s (link:MSNBC), "

-- The statement is utterly false. The link provides no such supporting
evidence, in fact quite the contrary - DoD missions by the shuttle
diminished throughout the 1980s and 1990's and have dropped to almost zero.
The secure control room facilities in Houston built in the 1980s for DoD
operations (and I worked there) have been ripped out and remodeled for space
station use. You made this up, and cited 'documentation' that showed the
opposite of what you wrote. Shame on you.



You wrote: "Still, so far, 'No nation has deployed destructive weapons in
space,' notes the Union of Concerned Scientists,

-- The UCS can plead simple ignorance when asked about the rapid-fire
cannon installed on Salyut manned space stations - but if they were
incompetent to be aware of the reality of Soviet orbital weapons, what makes
them experts deserving of credibility? Ditto the orbital weapons systems
such as the USSR's "killer satellites", space-to-space combat systems
developed and tested and kept on stand-by in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980' - for which there was no deployed US equivalent. I give them a 'pass' on the gun the cosmonauts are allowed to have at the International Space Station (none for the NASA side) - just don't pretend it doesn't exist. This is the kind of embarrassment you justifiably suffer when you trust sources because of political preferences and not factual reliability.



You write: "[UCS]: 'This norm may be breached in the near future.' Fearing
precisely this trend, China and Russia jointly offered to open negotiations
to ban space weapons .."

-- Are you claiming telepathic powers here, to know the true motivations
for the Chinese and Russian initiatives, since there are plenty of other
plausible motivations for their diplomatic moves? They're maybe playing to a
chorus for diplomatic advantage, while, maybe, laying the public groundwork
for any space weapons they themselves may 'reluctantly' turn out to have
been 'forced' to deploy is response to these phantom US menaces. And if you
are helping lay that propaganda groundwork, that makes you part of the
problem, not part of the solution.



You write: "But some in the United States viewed the initiative as a threat
to the country's freedom of action (link: Space Review). "

-- This is really outrageous. The link is to my essay on space treaties,
which you completely misunderstood and have misrepresented. I don't fuss
about threats to US 'freedom of action' - I wrote about the push to sign a
treaty that uses words that have no commonly-agreed-on meaning and is not
subject to verification. I'm sorry you chose to dodge those points, but I
think I can understand why - they are difficult to answer, and so in the
world where such advocates control the agenda, they just aren't mentioned.



You write: "Michael Krepon and Michael Katz-Hyman of the Stimson Center
argue that foreclosing on negotiations without testing the possibility of
banning some kinds of activity in space is shortsighted."

-- There are worse forms of myopia, or even deliberate eye-closing. The
Outer Space treaty of 1967 tested such a possibility by banning placement of
nuclear weapons in earth orbit. It didn't stop the USSR from building and
deploying a weapons system for placing nuclear weapons in orbit. How well
did the treaty pass the test? You can judge this question by observing the
utter silence of the UCS, Krepon, Katz-Hyman and other treaty advocates on
this treaty failure.



A nit -- You write: "University of Miami space expert Nader Elhefnawy
notes ."

-- Elhefnawy, a good writer and competent researcher, is a graduate student
in the university's English department, writing a dissertation on 'science
fiction literature'. Your statement deceptively misrepresents his status and
credentials. Did you not really know the accurate status, or were you misled
and were only pretending to know?



I hope you can address these objections and, where you concede they are
valid, make changes to your published material.



Jim Oberg

www.jamesoberg.com





Further reading:



See my recent (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15656337/).



Then there's the NFIRE panic: See http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4732874/



These accusations are nothing new. In 2005, when NASA ran its own

robot rendezvous test (that accidentally hit the target vehicle), a new
round of stories circulated about another 'secret US space weapon' -- see
my msnbc.com piece http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7671805/ and a follow-up
where a Russian expert agreed the accusations were phony:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7671805/